


Soft Wounds

by OnlyZouzou



Series: I misinterpreted this [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s06e03 The Children of Gabriel, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, POV Clarke Griffin, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23280913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlyZouzou/pseuds/OnlyZouzou
Summary: 603 - Because Bellamy strangled Clarke with his bare hands and tried to kill her during the eclipse... and no one ever spoke of this again (????)
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Echo
Series: I misinterpreted this [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674193
Comments: 7
Kudos: 60





	Soft Wounds

We've been held here for hours, and Bellamy hasn't met my eyes for a single minute. Not that I watch time pass by or currently realize it, but this information remains latent, silent knowledge that occasionally tickles my conscience.

Murphy still hasn't returned from his journey to the afterlife. My mother continues to watch him and Emori has not moved from his side, overwhelmed by devouring remorse.

Jackson has just finished healing the wound he caused Miller in the craziest moments of the eclipse and the guilt seems to be eating away at him too.

In one corner of the room, I can almost see the tears that Raven is preventing herself from letting flow. The grief of losing Shaw makes her hazel eyes shine with a glow that I can hardly face.

Echo remains not far from her, ready to act from one second to the next, to defend or comfort her, I cannot say. Ready to fight for her anyway, that's for sure. Present for the sister she found during those six years in space.

Everyone seems busy ruminating about the latest events and worrying about the future and that's what I'm thinking about: Bellamy hasn't spoken to me for hours, not a single word or a single look.

I feel pathetic.

The word makes me shiver, brings me back to that moment before the red sun when I almost thought I had found him again. The Bellamy to whom I was addressing each of my radio messages. The Bellamy with whom to talk and joke, even during our darkest hours, had always been so natural, as natural as breathing.

_"A little pathetic maybe..."_

This Bellamy, the one from our conversation earlier in the day, the one who had given me one of the sweetest smiles I have ever seen, this Bellamy is so far from the one that the eclipse transformed, so far from the person who tied his hands around my neck until the air in my lungs became so thin that I saw the death for a second. I know that the person who did this to me, as well as the person who tried to drown Murphy, is not this Bellamy- my Bellamy. None of this is his fault, and I would tell him if he even bothered to speak to me for one second. He would read it in my eyes if he dared to look me in the eye for a moment.

When Russell finally comes back with his crew and starts talking to us, I feel relieved. I could not have stayed inactive and trapped in this guesthouse for one more minute, stuck with a family from which I feel excluded, without having the slightest idea of what awaits us.

Madi is in danger. The outside of the radiation field is not safe. I have to go get her. I have to get her back to safety.

Leading, deciding and ordering comes back to me so naturally that I forget for a second that I am in disgrace with those I call my friends. Raven's words bring me back to earth immediately (if I may say so) but nothing can taint Bellamy's sudden, unexpected and absolute trust when Russel asks me:

**"Are you the leader of these people, or not?"**

Without having to turn around, I hear Bellamy approaching, I feel his warmth right behind me, his always reassuring presence and his voice so confident when he answers:

**"She is. She can speak for us."**

Overwhelmed by anguish, I don't immediately put the words into the right context. In my mind, several voices are colliding and getting tangled. The loudest shouts "Madi, Madi, Madi, Madi, Madi, Madi" over and over again, afraid of knowing that she may be in danger, eager to come to her rescue. The other echoes Bellamy's words and, at first, I barely hear it, this voice. It whispers:

_"283 lives for one, she must be pretty important to you?"_

Then another answer:

_"She is."_

When the decision is made against my will and I am forced to stay in Sanctum to talk to these people. I know I have no choice. This does not prevent me from being angry, from still shaking under the influence of anticipation, adrenaline, the action that is calling me.

Keeping my emotions quiet to let my reason speak is much more difficult than I remember. Six years without having to do it certainly must have rusted me.

Russell and his suite disappear and leave us alone to discuss the next steps. However, there is not much to discuss. Echo, Raven and Octavia are already out waiting for Bellamy. The latter was kept by Jackson, just long enough for the doctor to check the stitches of his leg injury one last time. From the injury I caused him.

And maybe six years in space didn't rust him, because Bellamy suddenly lifts his eyes over Eric's shoulder and briefly crosses mine, as if conscious even without seeing it of my gaze weighing on him. This time, however, I'm the one lowering my head, ashamed of the memories of the eclipse and what the toxins in the air pushed me to do. To myself, but also to others. To Bellamy.

I turn my back on him, feeling my eyes burning and look up in a desperate attempt to clear my mind. I won't let emotions overwhelm me. Not now, when everyone seems to be counting on me, even if they don't want to. It's only when I clear my tight throat that I feel the pain. I rub my hand around my neck by reflex and wince when my fingers bump into reddened and damaged skin.

Of course, this is the moment Bellamy chose to get up and walk towards me.

**"Clarke? Can I talk to you for a minute?"**

I jump, drop my hand and turn around trying to hide my surprise and distress. I feel guilty and miserable enough for the things I did during the eclipse, no need to add to it and thus put my remorse and regret on his shoulders.

But it would be a misunderstanding of Bellamy to believe that I could avoid him this burden. And it would be forgetting that he knows me (or knew me) well enough to believe that he does not notice the move I am trying to hide from him.

His brown eyes carefully follow the movement of my fingers, from my neck to my side, then come to anchor themselves on the marks which, I know, already stain slowly but surely around my throat. The marks his hands left on my skin when, a few hours earlier, he tried to kill me.

His attempt to end my life, and the words that followed it, will haunt me for a long time, I know. I know this as I know that, even if his words and actions have overcome his thoughts, the basis of truth that inspired them is a bottomless pit of unspoken words and regrets. As I was about to slit my own throat when my mother's accusations through the radio had hurt me where I was already suffering, Bellamy's words take their source in the bitterness of our last moments on Earth.

_"In case you haven't noticed, Clarke, I don't need you anymore."_

_"How many times have you tried to kill me now?"_

_"I'm saving us from both of you."_

_"This time, you die, not me."_

An ice-cold and unpleasant shiver rises along my spine and causes the hair on my arms to rise. I try to hide my turmoil by answering him:

**"What?"**

My aggressive and annoyed tone doesn't even seem to scratch him. He moves forward until he finds himself so close to me, so close that the warmth of his body, so familiar and yet so foreign, swallows up mine and overwhelms me until finally, my anxiety, my doubts and the deep sadness that never seems to leave me finally soothe itself in his very presence.

I shiver again, but no more dread, while Bellamy continues to stare his dark eyes at the bruises that are appearing on my neck. He remains silent and his gaze penetrates me and all my barriers; slowly but surely peels back each layer and each wall I have built with the help of the chaos sown in my path and the abandoned ruins around me.

It is only when I am so close to feeling so exposed that I am shaky, that I end up calling out to him:

**"Bellamy ?"**

His name rolls over my tongue and caresses my lips in such an intimate way that I am embarrassed. My fault, for repeating it at least once a day for 2199 days. I don't have time to pull myself together when his burning irises suddenly plunge into mine and my throat tightens painfully in front of the distress of his eyes. I try to read the myriad of emotions that collide there, but my mind suddenly clears completely when he carries his fingers to my throat.

I can't stop my instinctive withdrawal motion, but I manage to fight to avoid running away completely. Something shatters in his eyes and the guilt eats away at me.

I watch him swallow painfully, just before he whispers:

**"Sorry. I didn't want to..."**

I shake my head. He doesn't have to apologize. Never.

This time, his hand goes up more slowly and I see the question in his eyes before he asks it aloud, his voice shaking and deep, almost broken.

**"May I?"**

It's Bellamy, I convince myself. If I can't trust him, I could never trust anyone. So, I simply nod to give him my consent, too overwhelmed by emotion to articulate even the slightest word.

The few seconds separating his fingertips from my skin are not enough to prepare me for his contact. That' s why I can prevent neither the shivering that runs through me when he softly touches my skin, nor the slight wince of pain that it tears me away, nor the heat that suddenly transcends my whole being.

I'm a wreck under his fingers. I don't even know what still makes me stand up. Maybe it's him? Maybe I am so used to keeping myself straight despite everything that might try to destroy me that it is this survival instinct that makes me stay on my feet at this very moment? Perhaps it is the missions that are awaiting us and of which I have forgotten everything at this precise second, but which are still ticking the corner of my brain because of their urgency...

Facing me, so close that his breath is tickling my cheeks and eyelashes, Bellamy doesn't seem to be in better shape. His eyes are shining with thousands of emotions that I am also trying to contain. This is not the place. Not the time. Not fair. Not right.

And it's amazing how my heart and head continue to know him so well, to guess and sense him, because I know what words will leave his mouth long before they do. I would like to interrupt him because I don't know if they will be able to hold on, my heart and my head, in front of so much tenderness and devotion. I would like to put my fingers on his lips and stop him from saying the words that may end up breaking me. But I remain motionless. His fingertips caress the edge of my throat and I remain motionless. He touches the bruises he caused himself and I remain motionless. His eyes meet mine. I hold his gaze. I am trying to give him the same tenderness, the same devotion. I'm trying to tell him I don't blame him. I am trying to tell him what my words are not ready to express yet.

This is the very moment when I feel my heart bleeding in my chest, bleeding everything I can't confess to him when his fingers start shaking and he sharply removes his hand from my neck as if suddenly burned by all the unspoken things that are floating around and between us.

Then, in this new way that I discover as I get to know him again, he buries his hands in his pockets. And this attitude is so unlike him that I can't help but feel the bitterness that suddenly overflows me.

 **"I'm so sorry, Clarke..."** he murmured, his voice tight.

I sigh.

**"Bellamy-"**

**"No, please don't stop me from apologizing. What I did- Clarke, what I almost did is unforgivable. Whatever excuses the eclipse might give me, I- It's unforgivable."**

**"Yet that's what we're good at, Bellamy. Forgiving each other."**

His fragile smile does not reach the brown of his eyes. Beneath the surface of his irises, a storm of regret and sadness roars and, this time, I don't know how to calm him down.

**"If Murphy hadn't been there, Clarke, I never would have been able to recover, I never-"**

This time, his voice breaks and he looks away as if taken aback by the emotions that are holding him and torturing him. My reaction is almost instinctive. I can't let him carry this guilt on his shoulders. As strong as they are, they cannot bring all the misery in the world. Like an instinct, my left hand comes to rest on his arm.

**"Hey..."**

He closes his eyes briefly, comes to his senses, seems to use my presence to anchor himself in the moment in the same way that I used his earlier to regain my mind. He exhales, then inhales slowly. When he turns his head towards me, he seems more composed, at least composed enough for me to add:

**"If I hadn't fought back- if Murphy hadn't stopped you... I played the "if game" for six years, Bellamy. You won't remake the world with assumptions. What is done, is done. We can't go back, we can only move forward."**

**"Move forward? I tried to strangle you, Clarke... It's not something we should ignore and erase with a clap of the hand."**

**"And I stabbed you."**

**"To defend yourself. To save Murphy. To prevent me from doing the unthinkable, I-"**

**"Bellamy, Stop."**

My tongue clicks, my tone thunders with impatience. I can't believe he's still so stubborn after all these years. I can't believe he still needs the same words to believe me and move on. And yet...

**"You're forgiven, Bellamy. I forgive you."**

And yet, as soon as the words are spoken, his shoulders crumble, the tormented expression on his face smoothes out, the storm in his eyes calms down. In the way his jaw contracts and pulsates, I guess he would like to say more, and I think that's what he's about to do when:

**"Bellamy?"**

His stance changes completely when Echo's voice resonates behind us. I see it as well as he also saw my whole being freezing when she appears in the tavern's opening.

 **"I'll be right there,"** he replies, and I can't help but notice that even his voice sounds different.

The spy nods her head, then exits immediately. A few whispered words about Russell and the tactics to be addressed, the promise to bring Madi back to me safe and sound, and Bellamy disappears behind her heels.

I follow them without a second word until I reach the steps by which they will leave Sanctum. Then, my gaze slowly travels to the edge of the woods where Madi, Gaia, and Diyoza are waiting for them somewhere.

Among the red leaves, I can see Bellamy's silhouette.

I don't need to have any confirmation. I know he's the one who's walking away. And when he turns one last time before crossing the radiation barrier, I know that this final look is for me.


End file.
